--- In phoNet@y..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@i...> wrote:
Richard to Piotr: Thank-you for the very interesting reply.
> Robert Blust ("Patterns of sound change in the Austronesian
languages". In: Philip Baldi [ed.]. 1990. _Linguistic Change and
Reconstruction Methodology_. Berlin/NY: Mouton de Gruyter. 231-267)
cites a number of interesting AN developments involving nasality
(being a vast family with a relatively well-reconstructed history, AN
is an excellent testing ground for would-be "diachronic universals").
Here are a handful of examples:
I am having difficulty getting access to this GB £319, 752 page
book - the Hertfordshire library service definitely does not have
anything by Baldi. Does anyone know how poor (or good) a
substitute 'Patterns of Change: Linguistic Change and Reconstruction
Methodology' (343pp, US$39) with Baldi as author would be? I am
considering buying the latter.
> "In Palauan, a velar nasal appears before the reflex of all Proto-
Malayo-Polynesian initial vowels (*anak > {ng}alek 'child', *ikan >
{ng}ikel 'fish, *uRat > {ng}urd 'vein, artery'). The suggestion that
these developments are due to the fossilization of old grammatical
markers is superficially attractive, but since the epenthetic
consonant is associated with all grammatical classes in both
languages there appears to be little reason to consider it a product
of anything but phonological change" (p. 242).
This looks like a neutralisation of /ng-/ and /?-/, though it is not
the sort of neutralisation I had in mind. I wonder how it compares
to the initial ng- in some Mandarin Chinese dialects? Has M. Jacques
any comments?
> In a number of AN languages there is a merger of word-final *l and
*n and/or of final voiced stops with the homorganic nasals (*b and
*m, etc.), the result being always a nasal consonant (p. 247).
This is one of the sorts of neutralisation I had in mind. /-b/ > /-
m/ seems a bit odd, but I have noticed its equivalent as a sporadic
idiolectical(?) variation in Siamese - /yim/ for /yip/, itself a
colloquial contraction of standard yii41 sip22 'twenty'. (There is
no final voicing contrast in the Tai languages.) I've also seen this
substitution (<m> for <b>) in other words in handwriting, but there
it may be a scribal error - the Thai letters are very similar and the
hand may easily proceed with the wrong one on automatic pilot!
However, such neutralisations constitute a 'system collapse'. Would
the like of -v~-p~-m > -p~-m~-m occur?
> There is a curious phenomenon called "rhinoglottophilia" (Matisoff
1975), consisting in a correlation between glottal or pharyngeal
activity and the position of the velum (note the characteristic
nasalisation of uh-huh-like grunts). There are several examples of
nasality conditioned by "laryngeals" in AN (e.g. in Rennellese). In
Seimat (western Admiralty Islands) old *p and *d fell together
as /h/, but may still be distinguished by the nasalisation o the
following vowel, appearing only after /h/ < *d, e.g. *puaq >
hua 'fruit', but *dua > hu~a 'two (in counting trees)' (p. 249).
Presumably nasalisation appeared and became lexicalised at a time
when the lenited reflex of *p was still /f/ or the like.
This is exactly the sort of counterexample I was looking for. I had
never heard of rhinoglottophilia. Interestingly, Blust ('Seimat
Vowel Nasality: A Typological Anomaly', in Oceanic Linguistics, vol.
37, no. 2, December 1998, summarised in
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/ol/OL372.html) says that the
underlying phenomenon is a contrast of /h~/ and /h/ (and that there
is a similar contrast of /w~/ and /w/). The occasional (e.g. Shan
and Po-ai) regular Tai change ?b- > m- would be similar. Does this
mean that a British English [?t] could become [n]? The AN and Tai
examples both apply to consonants which used to be voiced, though
proto-Tai ?b- does count as voiceless in its effect on tones.
> Cf. also:
> http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/6/6-553.html
Alas, I don't have access to a university library.
The Nasalfest symposium (1975) looks interesting; I see someone on
the linguist list is begging for a copy.
Is the change from Sanskrit "sarpa" to Hindustani "saNp" (snake)
regular or sporadic? I had the impressions that Prakrits converted
clusters with /r/ to geminates, but my knowledge in this field is
very sketchy - largely restricted to what can be derived from
comments about 'hypercorrect' sanskritisations. If -rp- > -mp- > -~p-
is a regular change, the first stage would be a subsystem collapse,
as I gather intervocalic clusters were reduced to geminates and
clusters of homorganic nasal plus consonant (plosive only). Has Dr
Kalyanaraman any comments?
To summarise, there appear to be at least three classes of regular
sound changes creating nasals:
1. 'System collapses', in which various final consonants merge with
final nasals.
2. Miscellaneous mergers of nasals and non-nasals. It is conceivable
that these are 'hypercorrections'. (The examples I have in mind, all
in initial position, are mergers of /ng-/ (velar, not cluster) and /?-
/, and of /ny-/ (palatal, not cluster) and /y-/.) A parallel would
be the merger of Modern English /wr-/ and /r-/ to yield /wr-/! /wr-/
*subsequently* simplified to /r-/.
3. Rhinoglottophilia, in which glottal or pharyngeal 'activity'
becomes associated with nasality. This can yield nasalised
consonants, or even plain nasal consonants.
Of these classes, only rhinoglottophilia could create nasals in a
language without nasals.
Now I have some hints, I may be able to dig out some reliable
information about other changes involving nasals. I have wondered
what nasalised segments can yield nasal consonants. The usual fate
of nasalised vowels seems to be denasalisation.
Richard.